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Thursday July 13, 2006

Beijing Hutongs Demolished

In a recent story on Beijing in the New York Times, titled "Olympics Imperil Historic Beijing Neighborhood", it discusses something that I have seen in many places around this city: destruction of the old, paving way for the new.

In 2005, while I was here, I travelled amongst some of these areas in Qianmen and was quite shocked when I returned this year to find homes turned into rubble. But the cynic in me was not surprised - these areas could easily be considered "too close" to the centre of the city and lacking in terms of visual appeal to be allowed to continue to exist when the world turns its spotlight on the city in 2008 for the Olympic Games.

This destruction isn't confined to areas close to the centre of the city - in Wudaokou buildings, some tall, some more Hutong style, are being demolished. In this area, housing is probably suffering from the same fate as that in Qianmen - the land is valuable (relatively close to the Olympics as well as most of the important universities in Beijing) and perhaps just too easily accessed by foreigners. The shop I bought a bike at last year is gone, some outdoor markets close to the line 13 subway are gone (buildings around them turned to rubble.) One might say that someone is systematicly wiping parts of historic Beijing from the face of the earth, never to be seen again.

Time to get out there with your camera, video or otherwise, to explore and record part of the vanishing history that were the Hutong areas around Beijing. Oh, I'm sure some Hutong areas will continue to exist, those explicitly maintained for the benefit of tourism, but those aren't nearly as interesting as the real thing, where real people live/work.

( Jul 13 2006, 02:38:49 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]